Josephine Yu invites me to dinner, and when I ask her
what it is so I can bring the right wine, she thinks for
a second and says, "A chicken from Eugene," and when

I say, "Who's Eugene?" she says, "Eugene's not a person
but the town of Eugene, LA, where they stuff chickens
with wild rice and cajun seasonings, though actually

it's a chicken from Maurice," and when I say, "Who's
Maurice?" Josephine Yu says "Maurice is not a person
but a town also," though the business about the wild rice

and cajun seasonings stays the same. Which is fine,
though I like to think of the chicken as coming from
a real man and possibly even a Great Man of the kind

described by the Great Man Theory proposed by
nineteenth-century hotshot Thomas Carlyle, who believed
that history is largely explained through the actions

of great men who exercise their intelligence, charisma, and leadership
skills in a way that changes life forever for
the rest of us who are not so great. Carlyle's argument

was countered by Herbert Spencer, who said that great
men were the product of the societies that produced them
and that their impact wouldn't be possible otherwise, which

pretty much means both guys were right, though Carlyle
was a little more so, since he also believed that it'd be
a good idea to study great men and in that way learn how

to be great ourselves. Sure, if that's your goal. But what
is greatness? "The discovery of a new dish confers more
happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star,"

said French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin a few years
earlier, and that's true as well, if happiness is your goal.
What is the goal? Let's say you don't have one—that's fine

by me. Here's what George Eliot said about top Victorian
fictional non-goalmaker Dorothea Brooke: "The effect
of her being on those around her was incalculably

diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent
on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you
and me as they might have been is half owing to the number

who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs."
There's also a third category of person, and this includes
those who just like to mess about and find that they've

invented stuff they'd never thought about in the first place.
Take two people who have changed the world, Sir Tim
Berners-Lee and Daniel Policarpo. Sir Tim started thinking

about ways to combine hypertext with the internet
and ended up inventing the World Wide Web, whereas
Policarpo dreamed of women with tattoos and Betty Page

haircuts and came up with the roller derby. What have they
done since? I have no idea, though I could probably find
out on Wikipedia. Then again, who cares? Aren't the web

and the roller derby enough? They're enough for me. With
one you can find out how to remove mildew from a leather
jacket or the best time to plant a fall garden, and with the other

you can watch women with names like Susan B. Agony
and Skank Williams race around in circles and beat the crap
out of each other. Life, I love you so much. Thanks to you,

I can do something or nothing, and no matter what I do,
the results are about the same as long as I do a little more
something than nothing in, say, any given two-day period.

Today I'm writing, for example, but this afternoon I might
get in my car and drive down to Wakulla County to look
at the wildlife and then treat myself to a big seafood dinner

with "all the fixins'" washed down with several glasses
of overpriced craft beer. Tomorrow morning, I'll be
too fuzzy-brained to write, but in the afternoon,

I can look at what I've written and decide which parts I need
to cut and which I need to expand or change the day after.
By the end of the week, I'll have a nicely-shaped poem

that'll sit for a day or two before I give it a haircut and send it
off to some lucky editor. So what if my tomb is unvisited?
I expect to be quite content there—happier, even,

if that's possible. It might be better on the other side. Who's to say
otherwise? Or it might be the same: the occasional meal
with our darlings, days of good writing, car trips

when the weather permits, long afternoon naps,
rummaging in the fridge for a cold chicken leg when
we wake, then writing again. How's that sound,

reader? If you're a writer as well, I wish the same for you;
indeed, I wish the same for all writers. And while
I'm sure I wish you a long and happy life and one

absolutely brimming with the sort of pleasant activities I've already
described as well as a number I haven't
thought of because they are more suited to your tastes

and experience than to mine, there's no denying that, the vicissitudes
of existence and our particular genetic makeups
being what they are, it's altogether possible that you might

leave this beautiful world before I do, in which case I imagine
myself walking by the graveyard
at night, barely able to see anything, when suddenly there's

a faint green glow through the iron bars of your mausoleum.
You had a good day at your desk;
you're a little peckish now, and you're looking for leftovers.